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The dream, which I dreamt with my bestie, Skyscanner!

And it all started this way. An uncle of mine, went on a Europe trip for a total of 2 months. Yes! Can you imagine? Two whole months. I asked him, which places did you like the most, in Europe. I was expecting the common asnwers,which mostly everyone says, I loved Paris,Lisbon,Munich et al But, I found the same answers, along with, I heard the city Athens. I wondered, everyone goes so mainstream, but uncle found something unique in Athens. Maybe there is something in Athens, which he liked. Or maybe the Greek culture? Let’s find out, with my best friend, Skyscanner!

Athens, Greece! Ain’t it beautiful?

And wait, there are more things to see!

Athens from Satellite – via NASA Space administrators

So finally, I sat down with Skyscanner and started to plan, on how can we, go to Athens from Calcutta. And, it showed me multiple results, and also, cheap ones too.Yes, the flight will go directly from CCU(Kolkata) to DOH(Doha) and then from DOH(Doha) to ATH(Athens). There will be a 6 hour stop at the Hamad International Airport,Doha, which will also be valuable to my journey, because then I will be able to explore the Hamad International Airport,Doha all over. And, the worry was, the flight will cost me INR 58,872. It approximately leaves me with around 40,000 INR. And here, even Skyscanner couldn’t help me. Because it had already said me, that my limit was INR 1,00,000. So, I had to plan cautiously and carefully my itinerary.

And the beautiful journey from CCU to ATH Airport. One of the most cherished journeys!

The Qatar Airways have a beautiful service and it has an awesome reputation among one of the best flyers of the World. It will be an experience of a lifetime to fly with the marvelous Qatar Airways.

Qatar Airways features FC Barcelona ! One of the magnificent airliners of the world.

Then,will have to leave from the beautiful CCU airport towards Doha. And, Doha is one of the beautiful places to explore. Sadly they won’t allow me to go out of the airport. But still, even waiting at the airport can be worth a while.

Will leave from the CCU towards DOH for the Greece Journey! ah!

After reaching the Doha Airport, will be waiting for some hours for the Athens flight, which will be so much fun and excitement because, it will finally take me to my destination, Athens.

The extravagant Doha Airport. or specifically the Hamad International Airport, Qatar.

After reaching Athens, first thing which will come to the mind is obviously shelter. I can’t spend all the seven days at the airport, can I? Obviously not. So, I started searching for a hotel, which would have beautiful amenities and which will be in a range. Hopefully I found a 4 star hotel, the Astor Hotel in Greece. The hotel offers most of the basic amenities and it also has free wifi which is much required for connection with friends. And the sightseeing places will be nearby from the hotel.And the cost is also not much, as I was expecting.
The 6 night stay will cost me around 28,011 INR.

The Astor Hotel, Athens, Greece

The spacious rooms in Astor hotel. And the extraordinaire view from the rooms!

The Astor Hotel,from outside. Beautiful, ain’t it?

Now, the question comes is, how to reach the hotel. I don’t know anything about the local transport services, so I will hopefully rent a car. But, wait! before that I will have to check my balance. So, Flight cost me 58,872 INR and Hotel bookings cost me 28,011 INR. So I’m left with around 11,000 INR. So, I thought of getting a small car, which would cost me around 6,621 INR,which is absolutely feasible. But finally, the small cars are absolutely cool because I cannot rely on public transport to roam the interior of Greece and the villages around Athens. So, I am still left with 5244 INR which will be mostly going in the toll tax of Greek roads and food.Maybe I could bring the pictures itself as a souvenir,eh?

The small car booking. It will be fun roaming around in my small car

So, after that, I will have to plan my itinerary. Isn’t it? So, lets start away, what say Skyscanner? Obviously SkyScanner won’t say no to me!

Day 1:Will reach Athens International Airport, only to see the driver will be probably waiting for me. Then will instruct him to drop me at the Astor hotel. And, on the first day will try to roam the vicinity and the locality of the hotel. Though I will try my best to capture pictures,but the eye view is something which absolutely cannot be described in the form of images.Delphi is both an archaeological site and a modern town in Greece on the south-western spur of Mount Parnassus in the valley of Phocis.

The Athens International Airport.!

Day 2:Will call up the rental car and then will leave for Delphi early morning. It will take me approximately 3 hours. There will do some sightseeing. And then will spend some more hours there only to return back to Athens, and sleep for a new day all afresh.

The amazing Delphi,Greece

Day 3:Will leave for Olympia. The famous Olympic Village in Olympia is a must-see. One can never say that I visited Greece but I forgot to visit the Olympia village. Also, one needs to see the Temple of Zeus. Which cannot be ignored at all.One of the magnificent cities of ancient Greece,which can never be ignored on a Greece trip.Olympia, a sanctuary of ancient Greece in Elis, is known for having been the site of the Olympic Games in classical times, the most famous games in history.The Olympic Games were held every four years throughout Classical Antiquity, from the 8th century BC to the 4th century AD.The first Olympic Games were in honor of the God Zeus.

Ancient Olympia – the cradle of the olympic games in Greece

Day 4:Will instruct the driver to visit Kardamyli City, to roam around the Mani peninsula. Ah the joys of roaming around a peninsula. Plus the view is absolutely priceless,which cannot be shared with anyone at all. No wonder Greece has one of the beautiful cities of the world.Kardamyli is a town by the sea and thirty-five kilometers from Kalamata. It is the seat of the municipality of Lefktro in the region of Mani.In the Iliad (ancient Greece book), Homer cites Kardamyli as one of the seven cities offered by Agamemnon to Achilles as a condition to rejoin the fight during the Trojan War. The village preserves its ancient name.

The Kardamyli city. Beautiful and awesome!

Then below you see is the Mani peninsula.The Mani Peninsula, also long known by its medieval name Maina or Maïna, is a geographical and cultural region in Greece. The capital city of Mani is Areopoli. Mani is the central peninsula of the three which extend southwards from the Peloponnese in southern Greece. To the east is the Laconian Gulf, to the west the Messenian Gulf. The peninsula forms a continuation of the Taygetos mountain range, the western spine of the Peloponnese. Mani is home of the Maniots.

The Magnificent Mani Peninsula. Just imagine how will it feel when the breeze is blowing on your face.

Day 5:Will visit the Thessaloniki city and will try to sneak in a way if possible either to Albania or Turkey, if the Schengen Visa permits.Also will visit the national park and see the Stavros village. Will also see the other nearest cities possible and the international train station at Thessaloniki.Thessaloniki, often referred to internationally as Thessalonica or Salonica, is the second-largest city in Greece and the capital of the traditional Greek geographic region of Macedonia, the administrative region of Central Macedonia and the Decentralized Administration of Macedonia and Thrace.Stavros is a village and is a community of the Volvi municipality.

The Greek Turkish Border. Ah won’t loiter around. Will just sneak in for some hours and then return back to Athens.

Thessaloniki city. A masterpiece!

Day 6:Will visit the cities of Mycenae,Nafplio and a side-trip to Epidavros or rather Epidaurus. These three cities are the wonders of Greece. They are highly underrated yet they have their own charm of being nearby to Athens and having such a marvelous ambience.
Mycenae is an archaeological site in Greece, located about 90 kilometres (56 miles) southwest of Athens, in the north-eastern Peloponnese.Nafplio is a seaport town in the Peloponnese in Greece that has expanded up the hillsides near the north end of the Argolic Gulf. The town was an important seaport held under a succession of royal houses in the Middle Ages as part of the lordship of Argos and Nauplia, held initially by the de la Roche following the Fourth Crusade and then by Aragonese nobility, before coming under the Republic of Venice and, lastly, the Ottoman Empire.The prosperity brought by the asclepeion enabled Epidaurus to construct civic monuments, including the huge theatre that delighted Pausanias for its symmetry and beauty, which is used again today for dramatic performances, the ceremonial hestiatoreion (banqueting hall), and a palaestra(wrestling school).

Napflio, Greece. Just mesmerising!

the ruins at Mycenae,Greece. The ruins of an ancient civilization. The Mycenae civilization.

Epidavros,Greece. The view is absolutely speechless

Day 7: will roam the Athens city once again, till I check out from the hotel finally and leave for the Athens International Airport, back home towards CCU. And in this way, the amazing stay in Greece for 7 days will end.

And I would like to thank Skyscanner for my trip, only if I manage to go to Greece,some fine day, in the future!